


lost stars

by pseudocitrus



Category: Tokyo Ghoul, Tokyo Ghoul:re
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Wedding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 07:11:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13497250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudocitrus/pseuds/pseudocitrus
Summary: Shamefully, it’s Nishiki that notices first. He taps on Kaneki’s shoulder and when Kaneki turns, Nishiki mutters into his ear.“Hey, King. Your new wife is getting tired. Why don’t you give her some time to rest?”





	lost stars

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @saikoqueen for Tumblr TG Secret Santa 2017, a fic set around the wedding/dragon chapters based on the Adam Levine song (per request!).
> 
> Hope you're having a good day!

Shamefully, it’s Nishiki that notices first. He taps on Kaneki’s shoulder and when Kaneki turns, Nishiki mutters into his ear.

“Hey, King. Your new wife is getting tired. Why don’t you give her some time to rest?”

Kaneki blinks at him. He looks to Touka, beside him. She’s smiling, accepting flowers that Shio somehow managed to gather for her. She…doesn’t seem tired. Earlier she look pretty annoyed when Shuu insisted on a mid-party outfit change, but even then she’d acquiesced without any verbal complaint.

“I’ll take care of things down here for a bit,” Nishiki tells him. “Go take her…hmm.” He thinks, and looks around, and then makes a small triumphant noise and points, to the silhouette of a platform across the ceremony space.

“Go take her up there.”

“Ah,” Kaneki says. “So people won’t notice us for a bit? Good idea.”

The platform was used for construction down here, or something, once, maybe; it avoided, somehow, being decorated, and looks like a place they wouldn’t be disturbed by guests.

But Nishiki frowns at him.

“No, idiot,” he says. “Because Touka likes high places.”

“Oh,” Kaneki says, and he feels his cheeks warm, in a way that he is sure is showing through the facial paint.

“Go already,” Nishiki says, “before she snaps,” and Kaneki hurriedly takes her arm just as Nishiki swoops in, taking the flowers from her, giving the Shio and the rest a shining smile.

“Why don’t I take these? I know just the cellblock they could brighten up.”

Normally Kaneki would expect some kind of sharp word for yanking Touka so abruptly, but she only sighs, with something that sounds like relief. He leads her quickly through the perimeter of the dancing crowds, which is easier than he expected, probably because everyone is now distracted by a very energetic-looking Yomo-san. They make it to the platform’s base, to the ladder concealed at its rear.

“Um,” Kaneki says. “Do you want to go up here? I mean…can you climb up? Even with your dress? And…and the…”

For some reason, it’s still hard to say.

“Our baby?” Touka supplies.

“Our baby,” Kaneki echoes.

Touka rolls her eyes. “Just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean I’m a weakling.”

“Right,” Kaneki says quickly. “Well, of course, maybe not now, but in a couple months I could see that you would…uh, that you might, I mean…well, of course I don’t mean that…”

He trails off. Touka waits, seemingly patient for the words to come to him. Kaneki waits for them to come too, and then gives up, and gestures that she just start climbing.

At the top, they sit, silently, side by side, legs hanging over the edge. From here, the party doesn’t seem quite as loud. The lights strung everywhere cast a glow that is more…humble than anything on the surface, but they warm his heart anyway, somehow. From here, they look almost like stars — as close to any stars as anyone could ever see in the city. From here, despite the circumstances, it’s easy to feel like their problems are small. Overcome-able.

He looks at Touka’s hand, which rests beside his. Then he glances at her face. Does she feel this way too, when she’s in high places?

What is she thinking?

“Thanks for taking me away,” Touka says. “I was probably two seconds away from snapping.”

Kaneki sets his hands in his lap. His fingers thresh together. They’re married. Touka is…his wife. He’s tried to learn coffee-making from her, and watched her over the top of his books as Haise, and even — embraced her, but such a simple thing — that she likes high places, that company can exhaust her — he had no idea about.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “It was actually Nishiki that told me that you could use a break. So I didn’t really…know. If I had known that you’d feel like that…maybe it wasn’t a good idea to have a ceremony like this.”

“It was a good idea,” Touka says quickly.  “I like it. It’s just…good to have a break. And just be…you know. Just. You and me.”

She grimaces saying it, and Kaneki can’t help but smile, a little. That’s one thing he knows about Touka for sure, at least: her particular shynesses.

Still.

“Nishiki already knows about the…baby too,” Kaneki says. “Doesn’t he?”

Touka snorts. “Jealous?” she asks, and Kaneki flushes.

“N-no,” he says, too quickly.

“You shouldn’t be,” Touka grumbles. “I didn’t even tell him.”

“You didn’t? Then how…?”

“I don’t know! I just tried to ask him a little question about human food and all he did was laugh at me and then ask if we used a condom, and what was I supposed to say after that? So,” Touka says, “Don’t be jealous. It’s just the instinct of a pervert.”

“Haha…well…that’s…” Senpai is really something else. Kaneki clears his throat. “I think what I’m feeling is not really…jealousy. It’s just…I guess I feel…irresponsible. Like…I should have gotten to know more about you. Before I asked you to marry me.”

They are quiet.

“Well,” Touka says finally. “You can’t take the scar back. So you’ll just have to feel bad about that forever.”

He laughs. When he looks at her, he can see she’s smiling faintly, and it takes everything in him to keep from kissing her, and then he remembers that there’s no reason he should hold back, so he does kiss her, pressing his lips to her brow to avoid smearing the face paint. Her nose wrinkles, a little.

“You’re such a sap, Kaneki,” she mutters.

“Which Kaneki do you mean?” Kaneki asks. “Me, or you?”

This time her nose wrinkle is prominent. “‘Kaneki Touka’…”

“If you don’t like it, maybe I could be ‘Kirishima Ken’ instead?” he asks. “Or maybe we can be Sasaki Ken and Sasaki Touka-chan.”

She frowns at him.

“Or maybe you can choose some characters that you like, and I can put them together to make a new name for us,” Kaneki offers.

“Mmm…” She doesn’t seem excited about it. “I don’t think I know enough to be able to choose good ones.”

“Just choose whatever you like!” Kaneki says. “A certain shape, or a word, whatever you like would be fine. Or,” he says, when she still looks uncertain, “or, you know, for now…just so there’s no confusion…you could also just…call me ‘Ken.’”

Touka looks at him.

“Not in front of everyone,” Kaneki says quickly. “Just…you know. When it’s you and me.”

He is unable to stop his blush from creeping up again, embarrassed at his own gall. But she doesn’t seem annoyed by him. She licks her lips. She brushes her hair behind her ear, and her ornaments, her wedding finery, clink together softly, like bells.

She inches, closer, so their hips touch. She leans toward him, and leans up to him, so her mouth brushes the lobe of his ear and sends stars all down his vertebra. She breathes on him, gently, warmly.

She whispers.

“Bakaneki.”

:::

He must have been disappointed. It was clear that he was happy about the ceremony and stuff in general but she could tell, that there was something else that he was struggling with, because his laugh afterward seemed just a little forced, and she cursed, but before she could amend herself, before she could fix her stupidity and choose some response that was obviously way more appropriate for the moment, he was moving on, and talking about all sorts of weird things that she had no idea how to respond to, like what was she up to all those years, when they were apart? (“Just…:re. I guess. Starting it. Running it.”) Or, what shows and magazines did she like? (“I don’t know…just any normal kind.”) Did she still like rabbits? (“Sure.”) What kind of rabbit did she like best? (“What does it matter? The way things are right now, we probably wouldn’t be able to get one.”)

In the darkness, her whole body shakes. He’d asked her a lot, so much, about everything, even about her family, the names on the ring he tugged free from beneath his wedding clothes and examined reverently in the faux starlight. The truth is there is too much already of her family that was never spoken to her, and is lost now, forever: simple things, like her mother’s maiden name, or what shows and magazines they liked, whether they liked rabbits or whether they favored any particular kind.

It’s not really that she’s a particularly optimistic person. If anything, dreams and fantasy would be something she might accuse Kaneki of having too much of. But somehow…even though for ghouls it always ends like it does for her own parents. Somehow, she just thought…believed. That she and Kaneki would have just a little more time.

 _It can’t be_ , she finds herself thinking,  _it can’t be that I already have all the good memories I’ll ever have_ , and she curses herself, tries to stifle the thought that’s already happened, tries to quiet her stinging eyes. Furious, she shouts.

“ _Ka…!_ ” Her voice comes out in a jagged croak. Her throat hurts — she was screaming, she realizes. She screamed herself hoarse, and can’t even remember it, can think only of the gleam of the quinques as they’d been drawn before her, as sharp as teeth. She swallows, which necessities her mouth closing, and she chokes, on the teeth-chisel grit of jagged dust. Her eyes are watering. She tries again.

“Ka —”

She coughs, gagging on still-settling dust that she can’t see, floating dry in the air despite the fact that she feels…drenched, in…something she doesn’t want to think about. Her shoes squelch as she staggers forward.

She doesn’t know where she’s going, but she doesn’t get far. Her shoes squelch and then she slips on a streak of something and she yells again, despite herself, gripping her stomach, but she doesn’t even fall, or at least she doesn’t fall to the ground. Something catches her, something hard and smooth and…warm. Her whole body seizes in fear as she hears — some kind of — loud, moist snap. Then she hears it again, and again, and realizes that it sounds…like…an eye blink.

Her trembling fingers confirm it — they scrabble along until they press on something soft and moist that causes the walls around her to quiver, that causes another snapping blink that pinches her hand. Touka jerks, leaps, stumbles, and collapses back, the walls follow. They caress her, gently. And she knows.

“Kaneki.” This time she manages it, but if there are any ears to hear her, she doesn’t hear them shift around, she doesn’t feel even the slightest twitch of recognition, so she tries again.

“Kaneki. Kaneki. Ka…neki.” Her voice is failing, not because of hoarseness, but because of something even simpler. She rolls back her drenched sleeve and wipes her eyes with her arm.

“Kaneki…Kaneki.” She gathers her breath. “Come on, Kaneki. I didn’t…I didn’t do everything I did just to…have it be like this.” Her arm is too wet. She rolls back her other sleeve. “I…did so much. I…like I…picked out all the books in :re. And I put all the good tables beside the shelves. I was…happy when you sat beside them, the first time you came back by yourself.”

She speaks slowly, staggering through every word. “I was…really happy I still knew you, even if you didn’t…know me anymore. Even if you…wouldn’t care anymore if I died. I…didn’t really need that, I just wanted to see you happy. I mean…do you think there would have been all those nice books you like in :re if I had let Yomo pick? No way. It would have been all just…comics. And stuff.”

The sound of her own rambling voice is embarrassing. It takes on the same strange aura of a word too-often repeated. But the walls are shifting, gently, as if breathing. If she places her ear to it she can almost imagine she can hear something throbbing in there. A person? Trapped inside? She closes her eyes.

“I…always looked in the magazines to find the bestsellers,” she continues. “But I, um…this is dumb, but, I kept forgetting how to read the author’s names. So…I had to make a list of all of them, and pronunciations…but it hardly helped because could barely even read the kanji I wrote myself…which is pretty stupid, right?” She swallows. “But maybe…maybe it would be okay anyway, if we did the thing you mentioned. I can just pick some nice-looking kanji and you’ll come up with some great name and it will be okay. We can do that with…with our kid’s name too. There’s no way I can choose a name by…by…myself.”

The throbbing continues, consistent, unmoved. Her hands turn into fists.

“Kaneki,” she tries again. “We can get a rabbit. A black and white one with floppy ears. We can start a new cafe, with the best coffee and the best books and — and as many rabbits as anyone could want…”

Nothing, nothing. Maybe it’s just exhaustion then, catching up with her, from all the running. She’s too tired even to suppress it again, that thought that stabs her right between the ribs:  _it can’t be that I already have all the good memories I’ll ever have._ She slides to the ground and doesn’t bother listening with her ear to the wall anymore, just rests her hands on it, presses her forehead into it. One last try. She sucks in a breath.

“ _Ken_ ,” she cries. “Ken…Ken. Come on. Ken. Ken. Wake up. C-come back. Ken. Ken. Please. Ken.”

The sound of it echoes, doubles back to her, repeats:  _Ken, Ken, come back, wake up, Ken, please, Ken, Ken_. In it she can hear her own gross tears, her humiliating pleas, her uncomfortable wild desperation. She wilts, and calls him even more loudly, until her voice breaks, again, and again:  _Ken Ken Ken Ken Ken Ken Ken_   _Ken Ken Ken Ken Ken Ken Ken_ —

In the end, there’s no sign that he hears her at all.


End file.
